Two Philly sports talkers are launching a new show at the height of the coronavirus pandemic
“Well, President Trump said he wanted us to get back to working by Easter Sunday," Tony Bruno joked about the timing of his new show.
The peak of the coronavirus pandemic seems like an odd time to launch a new sports talk show, but Tony Bruno and Harry Mayes are taking on the challenge.
Six years after last co-hosting together on 97.5 The Fanatic, Bruno and Mayes are reuniting to re-launch The Tony Bruno Show with Harry Mayes on SiriusXM’s Dan Patrick Radio channel. The new daily show will debut Monday and air weekdays from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Philly listeners can stream it and everything else on the network for free through May 15, and like Bruno’s podcast, the new show will also be available to watch on Twitch.
For Bruno, it’ll be his first daily talk show since he abruptly retired from terrestrial radio in 2015, when he was co-hosting 94.1 WIP’s afternoon show alongside Josh Innes.
“Well, President Trump said he wanted us to get back to working by Easter Sunday," Bruno said. "Little did I know he was talking about me!”
In addition to his years as a Philly sports talker, Bruno has spent time hosting shows on national radio platforms, including ESPN Radio and Fox Sports Radio. But for Mayes, an 18-year sports talk veteran who walked away from the Fanatic in October 2018 after being taken off the station’s midday show, it’ll be his first chance to host a daily show without Philadelphia sports at the forefront.
“The Sirius show will be pretty much what Harry and I did on terrestrial radio,” Bruno said. “We'll have the same kind of fun without worrying about being told to stop talking about anything other than the Eagles.”
“It will be fun, informative, fair, fast paced, irreverent, and unpredictable,” Mayes said.
And a little profane, at least according to Bruno.
“If someone uses profanity, heads won't explode in corporate offices,” Bruno said. “They want us to do what we always do, which is not how most terrestrial stations operate in this era of micromanaging content in the people meter ratings world.”
The coronavirus has had a devastating effect on media companies. On Tuesday, former Eagles offensive lineman William “Tra” Thomas was let go by The Fanatic, part of company-wide cuts at Beasley Media forced by the decline in advertising revenue. The same goes for Sports Illustrated, where 6% of the magazine’s already cut editorial staff was let go. Streaming sports network DAZN is furloughing employees and will withhold rights fees for games that have been suspended.
But unlike most radio stations and podcasts, SiriusXM is supported by subscription revenue. According to senior vice president of sports programming Steve Cohen, listeners are sticking with the network despite many no longer having a commute. That includes the network’s sports talk channels, which have been forced to innovate due to the absence of any games for the foreseeable future.
“When you get into a situation like this, you find out first and foremost, if your people are talk show hosts or not,” Cohen said. “Would it have been a concern to launch a new show during a pandemic for certain hosts? Sure, but not for Tony Bruno. I mean, Tony can talk about anything."